What J.M.W. Turner bought at Christie’s

The art market is, and always has been, a business that thrives on relationships. This year marks the 250th anniversary of J.M.W. Turner’s birth, and Christie’s rich relationship with the artist goes back to Turner’s twenties. Over the years, Christie’s has sold a great number of his works — recently including a rediscovered watercolour, The approach to Venice, and Lake Brienz, with the Setting Moon. But our precious auctioneers’ books — which record every work of art ever sold in our hundreds of years of history — reveal that J.M.W. Turner was a Christie’s buyer, too. And one successful bid reveals a great deal about him, not only as an artist, but as a friend.

The first Christie’s sale of works by Turner, and the artist’s earliest acquisitions as a client

The earliest known sale of Turner’s work at Christie’s took place on 29 May 1800, when the artist was only 25 years old. The sale cover boasts, among other delights, a collection from an ‘Eminent Amateur’ and ‘A Capital and Valuable Assemblage of drawings by the most admired Ancient and Modern Masters’. Among these were six drawings by Turner and one on which he collaborated with his contemporary, Thomas Girtin. The eminent amateur was Dr Thomas Monro, whose patronage of artists (including Turner) was so prolific that his circle was sometimes referred to as the ‘Monro School’. A medical doctor by profession, he was a passionate collector and connoisseur, as well as a watercolourist himself.

This sale was also the first known occasion of Turner being a Christie’s client. Two of his own works, The Welsh Bridge over the Dee at Chester and The Cloisters of Chester Cathedral, were bought by the artist himself, in a purchase that the auctioneer’s notes suggest was made after the sale. We don’t know why — perhaps he missed having those pictures in his own collection.

Some 33 years later, after the death of Dr Monro, his collection was sold at Christie’s. Once again, Turner purchased a number of his own pieces. This time, it might have been because he was preoccupied with his legacy. When he died, he bequeathed what remains to this day the largest donation of works of art to London’s National Gallery, but also specified how he wished them to be displayed. In particular, he wanted two of his canvases — Dido building Carthage and Sun rising through Vapour — to be shown alongside paintings by Claude Lorrain, to establish the connection he felt between his work and that of the French artist.

Why did Turner purchase lot 19, ‘Portrait of a Lady, and ditto of a Gentleman’?

Not all of Turner’s purchases at Christie’s were of his own work. In 1831, he is recorded as having acquired a number of seemingly inconspicuous lots. On 16 July, the second day of the sale of the belongings of the late artist John Jackson, he bought lot 3, ‘A parcel of Sketches of Groups and parts of Pictures’; lot 14, ‘Thirteen Sketches of Portraits’; lot 15, a group of 11 portraits; and lot 19, ‘Portrait of a Lady, and ditto of a Gentleman’.

Turner and Jackson were members of the Royal Academy together, and Jackson had actually sketched a portrait of Turner, which can now be found in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. But their connection does not seem to have been close enough to justify the purchases, especially as the prices were notably some of the highest in this part of the sale, with Turner paying a guinea for the portrait of a lady and a gentleman, the final lot he bought that day.

Turner’s friendship with Sir John Soane

It is only when we look beyond the auctioneer’s book that we gain some insight into Turner’s motivation. While his association with Jackson may have been tenuous, his close friendship with the architect Sir John Soane is well established. In spite of a 22-year age gap, the men bonded over common interests and mutual admiration. They moved in similar circles, and shared many friends. There is a wealth of evidence showing the relationship between the two.

A young Turner worked as a draughtsman for Soane’s travelling companion, Thomas Hardwick. Both Turner and Soane were sketched by the architect and portraitist George Dance. Turner’s library contained a copy of Soane’s Sketches in Architecture. Mrs Eliza Soane’s notebook records buying two Turner paintings on 3 May 1804. Both can still be seen in the picture room of Sir John Soane’s Museum in London.

The friendship between the two men extended to financial advice and support; they went on fishing trips together; and it was Turner who supported Soane after the untimely death of Eliza on 22 November 1815, aged 55. That year, Turner visited Soane for Christmas Eve, keeping his grieving friend company. It is here that we find Turner’s true motivation for buying from John Jackson’s estate sale at Christie’s some 15 years later.

Not long before Jackson died, Soane had commissioned him to paint matched portraits of him and his late wife. These portraits hang in Sir John Soane’s Museum, reuniting the couple. The museum’s inventory in 1840 records the picture of Eliza as having been based in part on a sketch by another Royal Academician, John Flaxman. It is this sketch, which remained in Jackson’s possession at the time of his death, that Turner was so keen to acquire at Christie’s. It is entirely possible that the last lot Turner acquired at the sale, ‘Portrait of a Lady, and ditto of a Gentleman’, contained precisely what he was looking for. Today, the sketch has pride of place in Soane’s drawing room, accompanied by Turner’s handwritten note, penned just two months after the sale:

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Sept 27th 1831

My dear Sir John

I called in Lincoln’s Inn Fields to congratulate you upon your Knighthood and to have the pleasure of saying so in person, likewise to offer with my most sincere regards the accompanying Portrait (now sent) of Mrs Soane which I fortunately obtained at poor Jackson’s sale.

Believe me most truly and most faithfully yours

J.M.W. Turner

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The thoughtfulness behind this gesture is a reminder that buying art at auction can be about so much more than money. For Turner, this purchase was deeply sentimental. With it, he showed his gratitude and support to a very dear friend.

Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals is on at Tate Britain until 12 April 2026

For further information on the anniversary events of Turner 250, visit tate.org.uk/art/turner-250